


Full Circle

by boychik



Series: The Scattered Past [2]
Category: xxxHoLic
Genre: 104, Biting, Blood, Conversations, Dissection, Dreams, Fighting, Kissing, M/M, What's for breakfast? krispy klamp donuts, Wishes, high-school tribute, pardon my shitty puns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-18
Updated: 2013-06-18
Packaged: 2017-12-14 23:52:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/842867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boychik/pseuds/boychik
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A blood pact goes wrong. Doumeki and Watanuki must nullify their relationship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Full Circle

**Author's Note:**

> Again playing off the proposition that Watanuki and Doumeki had a past together that was forgotten by the start of xxxHolic, a la Sakura and Syaoran in Tsubasa. Started as a series of drabbles about their school days, where the chronology jumps from elementary to high-school to middle school to high-school again. Sorry if it's weird or confusing.

There’s the bend in his nose that he got when you decked him because you asked him who he liked and he said Himawari-chan’s precious name. You weren’t thinking of Himawari when you hit him, or maybe you were, it doesn’t matter. It was your first time hitting someone and if the atoms in your hand were any judge, the stuff of the universe was not expanding, but rather collapsing rapidly and extremely painfully in on itself. As you howled and clutched your broken paw to your chest, tears of humiliation and frustration began to bead in the corners of your eyes. You tipped your head in the hopes that he wouldn’t see your flush of shame or interpret your howl of rage as one of pain—sissy boy—and that your tears would fly over your cheeks and drop silently to the ground—but of course they took their time, each teardrop carving its hot name into your face for a tiny infinity before splashing louder than even your ragged breath and raging pulse to the dirt. 

Your hand that cradled the other hand was trembling. You looked up with full expectation that he’d be laughing, or worse, gone. But he’s still there with his stupid poker face— _this isn’t Las Vegas, Doumeki-kun!_ their first-year teacher’s nervous comment trying to pass as cool, what a stupid thing to say, the class laughing. You hadn’t wanted to laugh but you went along anyway. Now he comes up behind you and places one hand on your shoulder and one hand on the hand holding your other hand and says, _It’s okay, Watanuki. I know. I know. I know…_

×××

You still feel guilty about it years later, as you watch him in class. You’d just woken from a dream and it’s filled you with such a sadness you almost didn’t want to come to school. You were in the apartment that you meant to share with him in college—nothing you’ve told him of course, just a small apartment with a kitchenette with a small calendar and little yellow curtains and a stainless steel sink below a window where if you were doing the dishes you could look out at the sky and the moon—and you’re pressing kiss after kiss to the bottom of his chin, his throat—he tips his head back for you and you continue in a slow line. He’s not looking at you, his head is craned away to the side—you can see his profile and his lovely nose, the bend you made all those years ago. He has a hand to his ear and for some reason you think he’s holding a conch shell and he’s listening to the ocean, but that isn’t it at all. He’s talking on the wireless telephone to someone as you kiss his neck. You hear a chirpy little voice crackle through on the other end and you pause. You’re staring at his profile and Himawari-chan’s voice is coming through the telephone and with one hand he pushes you away, still not looking at you. Looking away from you. You can’t stop looking at his arrow-like nose that he let you break. He says, heartbreakingly, _Not now, Watanuki, I’m busy. Go away,_ turned away from you like a haughty prince.

×××

Today is the day of the infamous frog dissection lab, rite of all seventh-grade biology students. You had been able to exchange words with Himawari-chan before class, her eyes smiling and twinkling like stars at night, her fingers just barely grazing your own as she took your offering of bento. Unfortunately, while you had bio this period, she had gym, was probably cutely running laps around the track in her tiny mesh shorts while you were stuck with Doumeki in a room full of dead frogs. The teacher’s explaining how to dissect the frog but you’re just staring at the frog, your mind is filled with the frog, and her words are slipping out the cracked-open window. The school is full of them, these small square plexiglass windows that can only open halfway, white plastic moulded round at the vertices of the frame, specifically designed to prevent suicide. The class joke, accompanied by a mimed stab to the neck, is that it’s up to your pencil to finish the job. 

So you’ve been looking at this frog. It’s just lying there—you’d say _helplessly_ but it’s dead—with its little eyes closed and its head thrown back with its entire throat exposed. It smells like shit, not real shit, but some sickly smell that climbs into your nostrils, clings to the cilia, fills your breath with its foul fog and makes you gag. The smell’s the same greenish-yellow, bad-banana brown spots as the frog’s skin. All of a sudden you realize the teacher’s stopped talking; the _click click click_ of her maroon heels are making the rounds of the classroom. It’s not long she’ll be peering over your shoulder, giving a grating smile and asking _How’s it going, boys?_ Doumeki looks over at you like _So?_ of course not saying anything. For the half a dozen years you’ve known him he’s always lived up to his name. So instead of saying _You can go first if you want, Shizuka!_ in an effort to hide your ignorance, you reach out to grab the scissors. You fumble and drop it on the floor, pick it up again, look around discreetly as you can in the hopes that no one has noticed.

You expect him to say, _What a klutz, were you even listening to her?_ but go figure, he probably wasn’t listening either, just staring into space with his tiny yellow eyes thinking about god knows what. He’ll probably keep doing that even if the teacher comes around, so it’s basically up to you—thanks a lot, lab buddy! You grab the scalpel and start sawing away at that poor little frog. The smell intensifies and you want to put one gloved hand to your nose but you can’t. You don’t want to look at the frog either, so you close your eyes as you work.

 _Bam!_ the scalpel hits you right in the bottom of the palm. You say to yourself, _Stupid, stupid, stupid!_ There’s a dark stain spreading through the rip in the latex glove and you wrench your hand away from the frog before you can drip on it. Little drops of blood collect on the floor instead. The cut doesn’t hurt too much—you guess you just barely missed a nerve. The only thing that hurts is your own stupidity. That and the knowledge that in a matter of minutes, the clear sunny sky will soon be wreathed in piles of spirits. The windows, eternally immobile at a thirty-degree angle, will do nothing to prevent their onslaught.

As you’re out of commission, your space cadet of a partner finally decides to act. Doumeki scissors the frog open in what looks like just one smooth motion, though it’s doubtless a combination of miniature cuts, revealing a belly bursting with eggs. Doumeki takes the forceps and pushes the flaps of frog skin aside. He pulls out an endless stream of eggs, bundled together like sticky rice in a bento, each one so glistening tiny and dark like the smallest pearls of the ocean.

 _Tobiko_ , says Doumeki, looking down at the gaping frog. _Delicious._

Such a terrible statement about this poor aborted frog deserves punishment. There’s hardly enough time to smack him with your bloody latex hand. Despite the distraction, you still see his eyes dart to the floor, where drops of your blood have failed to congeal and instead jump animatedly toward the mouth of a hulking purple Argus.

×××

You’re making out behind the school one day and he keeps stopping to trail the side of your face with his hand and stare at your pupils flaring like a cat’s. _What’s wrong?_ you ask, tipping your head up. He stares intensely at nothing the way you used to. _You don’t feel any different?_ he asks you. _You mean_ that _way?_ you say, even though you can feel the spirit hanging heavy around your neck, crushing your shoulders, the top of your spine. You can’t see it the way you used to though, not that you want to, but it worries you that he can. You force a grin and say _That’s so dirty, Doumeki_ and before he can say _That’s not what I meant_ you close your eyes and press your lips to his again. It’s too late, though: You can already feel yourself slipping out of your skin to hover above the canopy of clouds, to gaze down with notebook and pen like you’re a character straight out of some dumb romance movie. You sits in the sky, aloft and smug, asking annoying questions like: Who are you? Who is Watanuki? _Fine_ , you say in your head, _there’s no me. You’re you and I’m Watanuki. I don’t need you. You can go away._ The you dissipates into the clouds and Watanuki turns back to run his fingers through Doumeki’s short tufts of hair and plant kisses to his mouth and neck and imagine the brief but glorious weightlessness he felt before their promise.

×××

Maybe it had gone like this: Watanuki had stayed over at Doumeki’s for the night, back in the simple secluded room of the temple. They were speaking softly so as not to attract spirits—there had been a darkish violet monster curled around Watanuki’s neck like a scarf all day, and Doumeki had been switched to another room for the semester, too far for his blood to afford any significant protection. Watanuki was tugging at the spirit as subtly as he could, but still his classmates avoided his glance when sweat beaded at his chin and rolled down his neck—disgusting, no reason—and he kept yanking away at nothing. At the end of the day, he met Doumeki by the back of the school, and felt the spirit dissipate from its stranglehold as easily as wind rustles the leaves of a tree.

By now it’s late and they’re speaking of spirits. Their futons lie side by side, pushed together to seemingly form one mattress, small and white but shrouded in the shades of night that drift through the windows and slant across the floors. They’re curled up facing each other. Watanuki breathes out and Doumeki breathes in. He didn’t complain, Doumeki notes. “Was it okay today?”

Watanuki says nothing for a moment, then: “You should come back soon.” His little finger snakes out to touch Doumeki’s index finger, and gives it a tiny squeeze. Doumeki hugs his finger back.

“Do you believe in witches?” Doumeki asks.

“Should I?” Watanuki rolls over on his back and stares at the ceiling. He’s frowning in a shadow.

“If there are spirits, there could be witches.”

“Good or evil...” Watanuki says, wide-eyed.

“I don’t know,” Doumeki says. “But we should make a promise, just in case.” 

Watanuki rolls back onto his side and strains to look at Doumeki’s eyes in the dark. There’s only the faintest gold reflected back at him. “What kind of promise?”

Doumeki props himself up on an elbow. “A promise for protection. For when I won’t be there.”

“Yeah?” Watanuki says. His voice sounds too high-pitched, echoing too loud against the big slanted ceiling. “What do you mean?”

“Like blood brothers, only not brothers.”

“Just blood,” Watanuki says. “The exchange of blood.”

“Right,” Doumeki says.

“I’d never be related to you anyhow,” Watanuki says. Doumeki reaches out and tweaks his nose. Watanuki bats at his hand, laughing for the first time that day. Doumeki’s face does not change.

“I’m kidding,” Watanuki scowls. “So it’s for protection.” “I’ve heard of it done in the past,” says Doumeki. “Warriors or priestesses defending their home from spirits would often exchange blood as a form of protection. Sort of a pact, but sort of a spell.” “But how...?”

“We could cut our hands,” Doumeki suggests.

“Or not,” Watanuki says after a pause. 

“Or our legs.”

“Got any other ideas?”

There’s a rustle as Doumeki slides closer. He tilts his head toward Watanuki so close their noses almost touch. Doumeki is hot under his pyjamas. Watanuki wants to slip his cold hands into Doumeki’s warm ones, but thinks better of it—in any case, Doumeki gets there first. At such close range, Doumeki might feel the flush radiating from his cheeks. Watanuki tries his best to calm his face, so it doesn’t twitch so much and instead resembles a mirror of the stoic mask that is Doumeki’s face. Instead, Doumeki just asks him why his nostrils are flaring and cracks a rare crooked grin. Watanuki decides to just give it up already and buries his head against Doumeki’s chest, tucked against Doumeki’s chin like a gargantuan, earless cat. “Ah, no,” Doumeki says, strokes his hair once. Watanuki looks up, invisibly red-faced, to ask what’s wrong. Doumeki just says, “That won’t work for this.” Watanuki is confused. Doumeki says, “If you don’t want to cut your arms or legs, we should do this instead,” and without warning seizes Watanuki’s mouth with his own and begins to nibble, slowly but insistently, at Watanuki’s lower lip. Watanuki’s mumbles of _What are you doing_ and _How am I supposed to breathe like this_ but thankfully not _Stop it, stupid Doumeki_ are stifled by the click of teeth. Doumeki’s slightly pained look is lost to the darkness. 

“Don’t talk,” he explains to Watanuki. 

“Mmff,” Watanuki says. Whether it’s in misunderstanding or affirmation Doumeki isn’t sure.

Doumeki presses his teeth more sharply into Watanuki’s lower lip.

“Mrgh!” Watanuki says, and the force of this interjection is enough to split his lip’s delicate skin. A bead of blood forms over the cut and when Watanuki talks again it stains his teeth. “What’s with you! That hurt!”

“It’s just blood,” Doumeki says. “Trust me, you’ll be fine.”

Watanuki wipes his mouth.

“It’s your turn,” Doumeki says. “Bite before you clot,” and he opens his mouth to his friend.

Watanuki scrapes his teeth gingerly at Doumeki’s lip but halfway through utters a feeble “I can’t…I don’t want…I’ll hurt you…”

Doumeki bites down hard on his own lip, then kisses Watanuki. He grinds his lips into Watanuki’s until they’re both slick with blood, opens his mouth so they both taste the same mixture of salt and wintergreen and a sort of stinging copper. Doumeki’s blood is inside of Watanuki and Watanuki’s blood is inside of Doumeki. Still, it is enough to make them blood…not brothers, but something other. Something just as close as brothers, if not more so. After all, brothers don’t choose their brother. But Watanuki and Doumeki chose each other. Two people who can open their mouths to one another and slip inside a part of themselves—not because they want to change the other, but to cast a spell of blood, for protection.

As if echoing Watanuki’s thoughts, Doumeki speaks. “One for protection,” he says. He kisses Watanuki once more, on the forehead, a kiss that will leave a red mark like lipstick when he wakes up the next morning. “And one for you.”

×××

You return one day. You’re not sure why. In any case, you’re too busy wondering about Doumeki being able to see spirits than you are about some inhibited consciousness. You try everything you can to reverse it: tearing the spirits off your neck and flinging them to the ground when he’s not looking—too bad they always returned—staying home on rainy days—too bad that was only treating the symptom—making extra bento in the hopes that the blood he gave you would multiply inside you and flood your body and sanctify each grain of rice you touched with your spirit-scenting hands.

One day and you’re rushing home because the sky is tightening low and gray and it’s about to send torrents of rain crashing to earth. There’s an absolute monster around your neck; you can’t see it but you can feel ten kilograms of it sitting atop your backpack and belching in your ear. There are too many people crowding the streets; it’s five o’clock rush hour because you had to stay after school to clean the classrooms—luckily those on classroom duty work in pairs and you got to work with Doumeki, but he had to leave at four for an archery lesson—gave you a bloodless kiss before he left—and you cleaned that last hour alone. Still, it’s far more people than usual and you have to edge through the space between the telephone pole and the wall just to get through.

The monster is knocked off by the force of your manoeuver—his backpack could hardly squeeze through, let alone some obese spirit—and you can finally crane your neck up from the pavement to the…blue sky? 

Just a moment ago it was raining, but now…

Your feet begin to move like they have a will of their own. You would forget that inexorable draw, later.

Sitting on the sofa is the most beautiful woman you has ever seen.

“What is your name?” she asks, expelling a woozy stream of smoke that envelops the ceiling.

“Kimihiro Watanuki,” you answer, the words spilling from your mouth automatically, thoughtlessly, spoken as if you were throwing coins at her feet that you hope would prove useful.

“Kimihiro Watanuki,” she repeats, like she’s testing your name out as an alias or something. “Fifteen years old.”

You nod.

“There’s a reason you’ve come to my shop today…what could it be, I wonder?”

×××

_Do you believe in witches_ , he had said. You had never answered.

You stand in front of him. “Hey Doumeki,” you say to him. You’re trying not to shout.

He looks up from his book. You know him well enough now to detect when he’s distracted, if only for an instant, and you can see his eyes widen briefly as he takes in the huge heavy nothingness arrayed around your shoulders like a diva’s feather boa, only not as light and fluffy and not nearly so glamorous.

“Doumeki.” You take a breath. Why is this so hard? It wasn’t hard five years ago. “Do you remember, er…Well, do you believe in witches?”

He closes his book and sets it aside. “I do,” he says evenly. “Why do you ask?”

“Well,” you begin, “I was walking along and I found myself in a place I’d never been before…”

He’s still as you explain. He stands abruptly when you’re done explaining and strides toward the door. “Let’s go,” he says. “I want to see her.”

×××

“And you are willing to pay the price?” Her kohl-lined eyes, heavy-lidded and glittering like rubies, stare as if through them. She blows a ring of smoke, a circle so perfect only Michelangelo could have drawn it.

“Yes,” Watanuki says.

_No _, Doumeki wants to say.__

Watanuki turns to him, curls their fingers together. “Come on, it’s my fault. It’s my blood that caused trouble in the first place.”

“It’s not! I mean, it wouldn’t be…it’s mine, really…” Doumeki is fumbling for once in his life.

“It’ll be okay,” Watanuki says. “Remember, you’re the one who wanted to come in the first place.” He gives Doumeki as real of a smile as he can muster and says, “One for protection.” He presses a kiss to Doumeki’s lips and turns to face the witch. “I’m ready now,” he says to her. “Ready to go back to the way things were. I’ll see spirits, and Doumeki won’t. Just the way it should be.”

 _It’s not what you want_ , Doumeki thinks. _How could that be what you want?_

“All there is, is hitsuzen,” Yuuko says. “Still, you’re a brave child.” She reaches out one long pale dove hand to his head and smiles at him. He with the name of April first must play for far longer than a day or a month the part of the April fool. He with his eyes the same color as the swiftly darkening afternoon sky will have approximately the same relationship to the other boy now: cool, distant, hazy on the details.

×××

It’s probably a good thing Doumeki was switched to the other class, the way things are now. Watanuki’s practically choking in the rainy spring months. It’s just past his sixteenth birthday, but if asked his age Doumeki wouldn’t say sixteen. His eyes are too veiled, the bags beneath them. Watanuki’s shot up some four inches this year but the weight of the spirits has him tragically bent out of shape, a new-age hunchback of Notre Dame. _Stand up straight!_ Doumeki once heard an older lady chide Watanuki, ignorant of the ghosts gnawing at his neck like lions at their prey. Before, Watanuki and Doumeki had thought of all the things they would do when they were older. This year, Doumeki walks home to the temple from the back, and Watanuki walks to an empty house from the front.

Every day Watanuki sits in that empty house. It’s quiet save for the sibilant rain and wind rushing up against the windows. His mind is hazy—he’s gotten headaches worse than ever this year—and he makes bento with his deft spindly fingers. He hasn’t walked between the telephone pole and the wall for a year.

×××

_April Fool, April Fool_ , Maru and Moro sing in the shop. _Who will be the April Fool?_

 _Not today, girls_ , Yuuko says. She draws them closer to her and strokes their pale hair. _You must be patient. But I know, you’ve been waiting a long time._

 _A long time, a long time_ , Moro and Maru chant. _Oh Mistress, it’s been such a long time._ They snuggle close to her like puppies, sigh into each other’s mouths as Doumeki and Watanuki used to do. _Such a long time…_

And Yuuko responds: _I know, I know, I know…_


End file.
